Quicksand diplomacy

Prime Minister Gujral has undone the good work of Foreign Minister Gujral.

Has I.K. Gujral been over-promoted? As foreign minister, he was as sure-footed as a billy goat on a tricky mountainside. As prime minister, he has been floundering like a drowning victim in Baywatch. Nowhere is the contrast more embarrassing, or dangerous, than in respect of our relations with Pakistan.

Through 1996, Gujral built a steady reputation for innovation in foreign policy. So much so that his advisers - and media hype - conferred on his principles, his policies and his practice the high accolade of "doctrine", equating Gujral, in one telling phrase as it were, with great foreign ministers from Monroe to Kissinger.

When fortune unexpectedly brought Nawaz Sharif to the stewardship of Pakistan, in an election one of whose chief themes was the relationship with India, a new dawn seemed to be breaking.

When, further, the imperative of drastically pruning defence expenditure to save itself from bankruptcy became the primary economic reality in Pakistan, the objective conditions for internal pressure to seek peace with India seemed overwhelming. When Gujral became prime minister less than 100 days after Sharif, it seemed as if the Lord above was Himself preparing a special golden jubilee gift for our troubled subcontinent.

But just a few months on and the Gujral doctrine lies in tatters. What has gone wrong? Really, nothing more than that what it takes to make a foreign minister tick is, perhaps, not what it takes to make a prime minister tick. The classic precedent is that of Anthony Eden.

While still in his 30s, the young Eden made the world sit up when he resigned his position as the junior foreign office minister rather than remain party to the craven appeasement by his titular masters, Chamberlain and Halifax, of Hitler and Mussolini.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

When Churchill returned as prime minister in 1953, Eden was the obvious and much-acclaimed choice as secretary of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs. So acclaimed that when by 1955 ill-health drove Churchill gaga, there was no competition to Eden succeeding him.

Yet, in the two short years that elapsed before the far less glamorous MacMillan eclipsed him, Eden had taken what little of Great remained in Britain into the humiliation of the Suez affair. A fine foreign minister ended a flop prime minister.

The same seems to be happening here. Some prime ministers, Nehru was the outstanding example, can be their own genius foreign ministers. But it does not seem to work the other way round. Kissinger could never have become president. Gromyko could never have taken Brezhnev's place. I can't see Ali Akbar Velayati as an Ayatollah. Why, Talleyrand could never have been Napoleon nor Metternich the Habsburg monarch.

If Gujral scored a victory with the Ganga Waters Treaty with Bangladesh, it was because the buck did not stop with him. He needed a Jyoti Basu to take to final fruition what a foreign minister could conceive but not, without high-level political patronage, ultimately deliver.

That is why the breakthrough in Indo-Pakistani relations which appeared eminently feasible when Gujral was foreign minister now appears to have run aground. As prime minister of the most rickety coalition this country - perhaps any country - has known, Gujral is so preoccupied looking over his shoulder that he has no time to look ahead.

That is why the last foreign secretaries' encounter in Islamabad and Murree was so barren. That is why there was no joint celebration of the common 50th anniversary of Independence. That is why the hot line was not even activated when jawans on either side lost their lives in a meaningless exchange of fire across the Line of Control in Kashmir.

That is why Gujral did not even plan a meeting with Sharif in New York. That is why this summer will be remembered more for the film Border than as the Gujral doctrine's apogee.

Instead of India and Pakistan making peace, Gujral has widened as rarely before the window of opportunity for American interference. The embarrassing and humiliating "Will I, won't I?", "Should I, shouldn't I?" over his few minutes' conversation with Bill Clinton has humbled the nation, given Pakistan an opportunity to score propaganda points and stalled the bilateral dialogue.

The gains of the spring of '97 are being wiped out by the fall. It gives an altogether new dimension to the American word for this autumn of our melancholy.

Is there an answer? There is. What we need to do is restore Gujral to his position as foreign minister and give someone else the burden of selling the Gujral doctrine to the political establishment. What we need is a sure-footed billy goat for prime minister, as sure-footed in the crags and gullies of domestic politics as his foreign minister is on the slopes of foreign policy.

One choice for the post would have been Jyoti Basu. Alas, after the Salt Lake scandal, Basu is more likely to end his career in Calcutta's Presidency jail than on Delhi's Race Course Road. This leaves the wily Sitaram Kesri to take over as prime minister: there's a billy goat if ever there was one.

Gujral can be compensated by being positioned for the Nobel peace prize. After all, it was Kissinger, not Nixon, who was the Nobel laureate in 1973; and Le Duc Tho, not Premier Pham Van Dong, who shared the honour with him.